Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 142: The Mummy Demastered & Mega Cat Studios

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

Jeremy visits WayForward's offices to speak to Austin Ivansmith and Tomm Hulett making a modern-day licensed "16-bit" platformer with The Mummy Demastered, then chats with Mega Cat's Zack Manko about his studio's modern-day home-brewed NES games.

This weekend Retronauts, are you my mummy? All right. Hi, everyone. All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode. of Retronauts recorded live on-site at the offices of Way Forward Technology down in Santa Clarita, Valencia, someplace in SoCal. It's not San Francisco. That's the important thing. I'm Jeremy Parrish. And with me this time, I'm talking to Austin Ivan Smith. Who is whom? I'm the director on the Mummy Demastered game. Okay. You've done other stuff too. Amongst other titles here I'm going forward. Also directed DuckTales remastered, Mighty Switchforce Hyperdrive Edition,

and a bunch of other titles that people may not have played Thor for the DS was one of the other ones. I haven't played that, but I hear it's good. It's good. It's not the best, but the bosses are really good, and that's what most of the reviews says. You read a review, but yeah, it's pretty accurate. I think one of the best reviews we got was the game that didn't suck,

because it was, you know, you see it and you think, oh, that's going to be awful. And people said, like, oh, this is actually really fun. The boss is really cool. This is tolerable. Exactly. And also... I'm Tom Hewlett.

I'm a director at Wayford also. I directed the goosebumps the game. I'm a turtle's game, Danger the U's. Two Adventure Time games. And I've recently done level design on The Mummy and also on our lit mobile title. Okay. So you're the guy I should talk to you about the crappy levels and The Mummy.

You should talk to both of them. You should really talk to me because I oversaw his. He says he did the good ones. Oh, okay. I think I did the good ones and fixed his bad ones, but it depends on who you want to ask. No, I actually really liked the level design in the mummy. Sorry, Mummy Demastered. It really did kind of nail the Castlevania Symphony the Night vibe, like the structure and the layout and the way things fit together.

And Tom, how much interesting? influence did you have on the design of like the mechanics and everything? I didn't have too much influence on the mechanics. Okay, because I know there was a double jump and you hate those. I love double jumps. What?

No, I've read you denouncing double jumps. So you said video games with double jumps are a crutch. I've used double jumps also. I think in the right context a double jump is a cherry on the mobility Sunday.

Ah, well, that's good to hear. I'm glad you've come around. Not the hot fudge. No, the hot fudge is dash. Oh, that makes more sense. All right. But I did give Austin a book called Super Metroid shoot. The Anatomy.

The anatomy of Super Metroid. Oh, yeah? He actually gave that to me a couple years ago. Was it like Christmas or was it birthday? Yeah, so I finally got around reading it. I finally got around to reading more than five pages. because I wasn't feeling like reading at the time. But no, yeah, I've had it.

And then once it was like, oh, hey, Jeremy's going to talk to you. I was like, I should probably read his book finally. And then, yeah, because I love Super Metroid. And so Tom got that farming. But, yeah, Tom came onto the project probably about halfway through development, I would say. So we started development in January. And around April or May, well, the game was originally supposed to be out in June. And that was like, no, we can't, we need a little more time.

So it had a very, very, very tight schedule. And I was doing all the little design, and it was a little much for me to bear, along with everything else, I had to be on a project. And so Tom was available, you know, between projects, basically. And, you know, he was provided as, you know, hey, here's another director. So you can trust that, you know, they know what they're doing. and you don't have to hold their hand too much. You know, not getting like someone we just hired

as their first job in the industry kind of thing. And it was, you know, whatever needs you have, whether it's boss design, level design, anything else, you know, at your disposal. And really level design was the biggest thing, just filling out the levels and stamping out the art. So there was a lot of ground to cover on those levels, and he stepped up and, you know, handled a good chunk of the underground areas in the game.

So when it comes to level design, And what exactly does that entail? Like, was there an overall structure in place for the game? And you just had to figure out, like, what's in, within these boundaries. Yeah, so Austin set the overall structure, which was fun for me, because on my Turtles game, which was a Metroidvania also, I set the overall structure for the level design. So it was nice to come in as a level designer on Mummy and be like, okay, well, where does this fit in the game? Which item am I trying to get to?

Which corners do you want me to take to get there? and then like figuring out with the tools at my disposal like okay where's a secret room how do I get how soon can I get there how do I clue the player that it's there and that was a lot of fun to be on that end of it

not have to be worried about the overall structure because if Austin was going to change it later he'd let me know and I'd fix it but I don't know that was fun for me to just be a level designer it can be fun to and when I first joined Switchforce the very first Switchforce I had just finished directing a game

and they just needed someone to art at the levels maybe do some design, and it was fun to just be a little designer, and Matt Bowen was the director on that one. And it can be good to sort of take the shoes off a little bit and not have to bear the burden of the entire project and just get to focus on one aspect of it for a little bit of time. But as far as, like, how do you go about it? What I did on Turtles, I recommend it to Austin,

I don't know if he did it, he'll tell you a minute. We'll find out. So here's the order I want to encounter the upgrades. So it's like, what order would I teach the player these moves? when would they be useful which one's advanced and should be saved for later and then once you have that and kind of a vague idea of the map then you just place those those are your key points okay after this boss I'll get this

and then later I'll get this and that'll get me past these and then you're just filling in the actual rooms okay so I've just got the double jump this should be a fun double jump thing or in the mummy demastered my first area was about the lead up to the speed boost I was like okay let's let's mark off these areas I can't get through them without the speed boost so I'm being led secretly to the speed boost. Now that I have it those areas got blown wide open and if I experiment

a little bit I can pick up some extra upgrades I can run through a room without getting hit like an expert speed runner whatever but it's like building that in and thinking how do we want the player to do this and then once they can what do we want to give them to do? So yeah I feel like for a game like this

to be successful you know a non-linear-ish game with an element of exploration but also like a you know kind of a chain of upgrades that creates a critical path planning really does play

a major role, maybe the biggest role, like getting everything to relate correctly and to feel natural and, you know, for important things not to be so far apart or so inaccessible from one another that the game becomes a real slog and

it stops being fun to play. Yeah, and it's challenging because you have to think in the first month, okay, what are you going to think it's fun, you know, eight months for now when you're done with development and you're sending it out the door and just going like, well, I'm fine with what I sent out. So, I mean, the first thing I had to do was come up with what are our abilities. What are the abilities that make for a fun game? What are the abilities that will fit the brand and get

approved by, you know, the license holder? And then, you know, figure out those. And that was the very first thing. It's okay, well, here's the eight to ten abilities. Here's the order. I want to unlock them in. And then planning around, you know, starting the first thing I did after that was I opened up Photoshop, you know, turned on a grid and started just gritting out what I thought a good path would be that would make sense for, you know, this kind of game.

And, you know, like, Castlevania, you start at a fixed location and work your way inward, so you're kind of on the left side of the map or, you know, whatever, versus Metroid where you're kind of in the middle, or Super Metroid, I should clarify, I guess, but, um, because you're working from one end to the other, and it's kind of a sequential story.

So it's also, yeah, needing to fit with the license. And, you know, it's isn't backtracking a bunch of empty areas. There is kind of a story of the path you're going down to line up with the events. So can you talk about, like, the powers you did settle on,

like, why you picked some of those specific powers? Some of them are a little unusual. Like, specifically, like, the way you do the boost to get extra distance on your jumps. Like, that's not really, the way it works is it's different than I've seen in other games. I don't know. I'm just kind of curious, like, how did you? you settle on these powers and what kind of cool things did you have to

throw out in order to fit the license? You know, we, I think we almost had to throw that out because it was just kind of a weird maneuver. And originally that was supposed to be more like a bashing maneuver.

And, you know, it was this kind of late game thing. I think I wanted to find it sooner in the game. But it wasn't working the way I had originally imagined it behaving with how you might come to a room, like bash up through a floor to another platform and then work your way through that area. But, you know, you do bash through some walls to unlock some other areas.

That was sort of one of the focuses. But I think I'm challenging with, you know, how does it interact with enemies and how to use it, interact with bosses. And so sort of turning it into a phase dash where, you know, you could pass through a couple enemies and hopefully not land on them or line up with their location when you finish it. I still think that's a little sloppy. I'm not a huge fan of that, how that ended up. But it was more, you know, because, again, it's a tight deadline.

It's something where it was an idea. And it was, well, let's see how this works. And, you know, there's too much there to cut it. You know, I wanted to do, I mean, just because I think I said this one, we did the first interview, just, you know, how you start off. And, you know, you're kind of copying other things first, just to kind of get a groundwork. And one of the first things I copied also was a screw attack.

It's like, okay, well, let's have an air jump and screw attack. So those are two things that got cut from the game because it didn't work. It didn't make sense. And we needed to cut some time. And it wasn't as exploration-based as a Metroid would be. And there wasn't as much reward in exploration. I mean, you get more bandoliers for carrying ammo and some more health. but I don't think it was the same rewarding experience

and exploration base. You know, with Super Metroid, you have more platforms, more puzzling to the platforms, and this was more straight up, you know, open areas and more focused on the fighting. So it didn't fit. And also, what's the point? If you need to have a screw attack,

it's like, oh, I can jump through these crows and I'll have to deal with them. But beyond that, you know, there's so much more meaning behind it with something like Super Metroid or other Metroid games, and it just didn't feel, it felt disingenuous to keep it in. So I decided to come.

cut that. It's funny. Actually, the water augment was supposed to be, I think, the first pickup you got. And so when I cut those other two, and it was, man, it's having to go back to the beginning of the game right away, go through the water, and there wasn't a lot of water plan for the other areas in the game. It just kind of made sense. It was like a eureka moment. It's like, oh, what if we just put the water augment at the end, and then you can backtrack through and we can use water to lock out the last area. It worked pretty serendipously. so let's talk a little bit about the um sort of the influences on this game i mean obviously it's based on the mummy uh the the the movie but you know in looking at video games you you've you've dropped

a reference to super metro a few times but where else were you looking and and how much of this you know how much of the game did you want to be new ideas that you brought to the table um i i really i really didn't think of it as it wasn't too much of conscious decision of, you know, is this too much like something else? Because I think with any story I've thought of or any kind of game I've wanted to make before, you kind of get a quick idea in your head of what the final look is going to be. You visualize, you know, how the player moves, what the action is on screen, what's happening in like a single five second, you know, sort of a moment in time within the game. And you kind of work for me backwards.

And, you know, just picturing the characters, it's kind of an amalgam of just tons of tiny influences that are just sort of shaped, you know, what I like. I think for me a big thing is, you know, very visually influenced, you know, artist background. So for me first, first and foremost, was just a look, you know, that I wanted it to look 16 bit and that, you know, what are some good 16 bit characters, what is a good size for the character? Like, I really liked, you know, the size of the Contrafor sprites and the look and the fidelity of those sprites. And that also influenced Thor because when I look at Thor and this, it's kind of the same thing. It's not a small Mega Man. It's not, you know, a giant Final Fight, which would be really stupid to do for this kind of, kind of maybe neat. But I just, I like that scale.

I like that Super Metroid scale. It's just what I like and what I gravitate towards. And so it was, well, let's build it around that. And then just with mobility and movement, I think in a way I've always wanted to make something like this, where I've always wanted to make a character that ran around like this and shot like this. I've wanted to make a contra game, but not have it be straight up contra because I'm awful at contra games. They're very difficult for me. And I wanted something that felt like a contra character, you know, jumping around, rolling around,

shooting their guns that it just kind of fit the brand and so it was kind of a it just made sense to me but you know just thinking back to it's funny people have been saying Super Turrican and it's like I remember really liking Super Turrican back in the day I don't

it's but I don't remember it I don't like go back and play it often it's more of a I remember seeing that once think of all the TV shows you've seen as a kid and you just kind of like mash them together into this giant club of you know 80's nostalgia and I feel like I have a lot of video game nostalgia like that.

But, you know, but obviously Super Metroid was the biggest one. And to kind of, you know, mix it up and not pull directly from that, I played a lot of Ari of Sorrow, front to back before this. And I was going to play Harmony of Dissonance also. To see what not to do? Maybe. I don't know.

I never owned them on Game Boy. And I never went out of my way to find them, so I never had an opportunity to try them out. You know, I had Circle of the Moon. but I don't really I had it on Game with it came out and I don't remember it that well so it's obviously that left a mark right

and you know everyone else seems to love what was that one on PlayStation Symphony in the Night I've never heard of it no I don't know the title I always get lost in that game you know it's really neat but

you know there's a map if you hit select comes right up yeah that's great oh that makes sense I always liked playing it but to be honest actually confused me at the time because it was, I didn't understand the leveling systems. I didn't play a lot of RPGs and, you know, it was like, what, what is this? I mean, I was young, you know.

I know RPGs now, you know, they have numbers and you gain strength or something. But I, you know, it's weird to, it's weird to have different influences than everyone else, where it's like my upbringing, like we were talking recently about how I had Mega Man 4 as a kid and everyone else had Mega Man 2. You know, it's just, it just happened to be what I got. what I liked and, you know, Megan Man 4 and Bubsy and all those other. I'm going to say it's a bunch of bad games. Now people go like, oh, God,

this guy's... I can't touch this. The worst, seriously. No, but it, you know, I can't really... There's not one thing I could really pin it down to. I was really trying to replicate too much. I think it's good to have different influences. You don't want everyone to make a game

based on the fact that they played Mario, because then every game is like, you know, bad Mario. with the occasional good Mario but you know mostly people trying to do someone else's thing and not having the same inspiration as it so yeah like drawing from different

inspirations from a different well I think that's I think there's value in that and I don't know like Tom I've seen you you refer to this to mummy as like chondroidsvania yeah it's funny because I would never have really made a contra connection myself like it just feels

so different from Contra. Contra has that sort of speed and also a certain flimsyness to the characters, they die very easily. That's what they do. They just spin off the screen. Yeah. But yeah, it feels more, you mentioned Turrigan or maybe Gunstar Heroes, you know, with the lockdown firing. Like, to me, that's kind of what I'm seeing. So I guess that's like, you know, a generation removed from Contra in a sense.

Yeah, it's just an easy thing to jump on since you're already at Castlevania. Sure. you just grab the guy with the gun, standing next to the belt. But no, it doesn't feel like contra to play at all, other than shooting a gun. That's really all it is. I mean, it's, I think there's what Contra is and what Contra is in people's minds and memories, you know. And I think, you know, the guy's shooting in eight directions or shooting in multiple directions, and that's mostly what it comes down to, is that it's not quite, it is, if you took a Contra guy,

kind of threw him into this world, you know, that's part, Metroid part, Castlevania. And that's why I think I actually coined the term Contraibania. So, you're welcome. I learned it from watching. Because Metroidvania by itself, I think it is a little different. I don't think many

characters play like this for better or worse. It's like an experiment more than anything. But at the same time, this game does feel like the most, like I said in my preview that I wrote for Polygon, does feel like maybe the most literal combination of Metroid and Castlevania that I've seen, because it is like you have, you have

have vampire bats and skeletons throwing bones at you in a spooky gothic you know London subterranean ground area but you're running around with machine guns and grenades and stuff yeah so so you you did kind of do that but yeah like I I get what you're saying the Universal was pretty excited about that too yeah just to have like the the Castlevania aspect since they're the Universal monsters have been lent to Castlevania and That suggests an active role in the giving, which I don't think was necessarily the case. Well, okay, sure. But now you can fight those monsters in this context that people are familiar with, but on an officially licensed.

That's kind of cool. Anyone deciding that skeleton enemy, it's like, well, be okay to have him just, like, rip off a bone from his rib cage, like, what makes sense? That's what a skeleton would do, right? He's got to throw a bone, he's going to throw a rib bone. He's not going to throw a leg bone. He's not going to throw a leg bone. We want to stand. We wanted to have him also, like, have aversion where he talks, takes his head. He's like, he takes his head. off and like throws it at you, maybe like a headless skeleton standing there. But that was just, there was enough time to goof off with something like that. We had too much to actually do. I was going to do a skeleton archer too, but didn't end up not doing it either. Tom, speaking in terms of the level design, I'm kind of curious to hear more about just the approach that you took laying things out, because I don't think people necessarily

appreciate the fact that in a game like this, they're like, The actual, you know, arrangement of platforms and the flow really is important. I mean, if you read people who critique games, you know, like the Castlevania games on DS, sometimes you'll see them complain that the game just consists of boxes where, like, there's, you know, like just enemies dropped in the box. People would complain about that? Yes. What people would be?

I don't know. People on the Internet. People with level design opinions about Cassidy. Yeah, you think so. I mean, I've seen that opinion multiple places. Oh, I've posted that opinion. Okay, well, there you go. And this game doesn't feel like that, so I guess that's why.

Or Austin fixed it. No, so with this game in particular, Austin had done a lot of hard work. So he'd set aside, like I said, the overall flow. And he'd also put a first draft of, like, put these enemies in these rooms because he was thinking about the sequence of when you would encounter an enemy versus when you could actually handle the enemy well versus keeping it varied so you weren't just facing the same enemy

in each environment in every single room. So that gave me a lot to work with. So I would have a room, I'd know how big it was going to be, and like I said, I know which power-ups were between. So how often have I used the one I just got? Am I done with that? Am I challenging them, giving them like the ultimate test of that power-up?

And then I had the enemy behaviors. So if I knew there were going to be If I'm going up a vertical shaft And there's lots of enemies that crawl on walls Then it's making sure When I jump to a platform I might be encountering one And then maybe there's a platform in the middle that's safe But it's hard to get to.

So now the player has to be keeping in mind where they're jumping Or if I'm in a long horizontal path And I have lots of large enemies Then I know the players can be stopping to fight them It's going to take a minute Maybe there's small enemies to interfere with it Or maybe there's a platform I can jump on to get over them if I'm paying attention,

or I could do the ceiling cling to walk past them. It's really just taking the tools that I have, which again, Austin established. A lot of times the level designer has to come up with them or have his ideas first, but it's just, you have like a toy box. Like, oh, I have these, I know how they act, and I know how the player can act at this point. So what's the most interesting encounter I can get with these two forces?

And then trying not to do it again too many more times. Right, and then, you know, the classic Mega Man, like, I did this, now I riffed on it again, but it's harder. Yeah. Or way late in the game, I'll riff on it again and remind you of it, and you're like, oh, I can, I'm much better at this now than I was two hours ago. Like, that sort of thing is always, at way forward especially, that's always in our minds. But, yeah. Yeah, so that, that kind of gets to the, like, the enemy placement, which I think is important. But also just the way platforms exist in the space.

something that I've really kind of come to appreciate in the past few months as I've been going back to these old games and drawing really detailed hand-drawn maps of them is that even within the same game like the way spaces exist and they have their own like internal flow can be different like in the original Metroid you have some spaces that the platforms are really spaced out and far apart so like in those places it becomes more of a challenge about jumping And, you know, like, if you miss, then you drop to the bottom of the shaft and you have to start over. But then other areas, it's extremely dense. And, yeah, like, if you just kind of look holistically at these maps, you're like, oh, these all have a different feel. So, I don't know, like, how much conscious thought did you put into that sort of thing? And how much of it do you think was more just like kind of making it up that you go along? There's conscious thought to it as you're doing it. I mean, you know, you put a platform down,

then you'll play the game and test it, so you're looking for a very specific feel, and so you're modifying based on that. And then there's also just happy accidents that you're like, oh, we'll just try this here. And then either it works really well there, or it doesn't work there, but you're like, oh, my gosh, that thing I was trying to do before I couldn't nail,

this is for that, and then you'll, like, go back and remix all these levels. But I think in Mummy, something that probably worked out really well, if you like the level design, is, like Austin said, I was in charge of, like, the two middle underground stages, the tunnels and Prodigium, and Austin did the above-ground areas, and in the final area. But so there also might be two, like, a Tom mix of these gameplay things and an Austin mix,

and because they're separated by areas, maybe it just comes across really well. Like, oh, I'm underground now, and it feels different. I think it probably helps. But, yeah, it's really good to get the contrast, too. Like, even within a level, having, you know, all those jumps you're talking about and having a breather. I think a lot of people a common mistake is over designing and not

putting in a seemingly meaningless empty area or easy platform just to give yourself a bit grounding to sort of reestablish where you are to feel safe again because it helps add the contrast to the chaotic areas

because it's kind of like a song and if you just have a song that's just you know full steam ahead like crazy rhythm you know throughout you need some contrast to kind of bring you back and lead you back on that journey again and it's important to do that on the micro level you have to do that you know within a level or in our in this game within a room but then also you know what is the room next to it and what is the room before that right and what is the one after that you have to think about what is the flow what are the

flow of all these areas um in sequence with one another i think that's something that um you kind of see with samus returns i don't know if you've had a chance to play through that but it doesn't it doesn't give you enough of those lulls like the whole game is just constant encounters it's all very dense that's my biggest complaint with this there's no there's no like variety to how the spaces exist it's all very very like puzzle platformy with lots of combat and you don't get those those breathers but like i don't know if you guys have ever read some of the comments that megaman's original designer akira katamura has made about the way he designed

like enemy encounters in the original Mega Man how there'd be like one enemy and then you'd get like two of those enemies and then like even more challenging situation with those enemies and then he would follow that up with something like really really simple like some extremely

easy variation so you would destroy it and think like oh that was that was easy I'm getting good like not necessarily it's just the it was specifically designed to be easier to make you feel a little more confident. So it does give you that like build, build, build,

and then drop off. It's not constantly tense, not constantly pushing you. And there's something, I don't know if you play getting over it, but you're in a pot with a hammer. And, you know, this guy, he created quop amongst other things. And it's this game where you watch people play and it's just this crazy stuff happening the whole time.

But he even does that in there. He has these moments of you're going to this really difficult challenge. You're a guy with a hammer, just pulling yourself up a clip. and you can fall down at any time and lose all your progress. But you get to like the hardest thing you've seen yet and then right past that

is like a little bit of a breather. And you're in another area, but it's seamless. You know, it's just one super challenging puzzle after the other. But just putting in those small moments there, it does that, you know, sawtooth, rise in tension. Just a little bit of a little bit of a breather

before you go on to the next thing. Yeah, it works in film, works in storytelling. And it works in the old things. You're kind of, you're guiding, the player through all these things. Like I was saying, Star Fox. I was playing Star Fox again this weekend, and it does the same thing. We have these

encounters, and before the next wave of enemies come in, there you get a little bit of a moment to reassess and realign yourself before the next challenge comes out of you. That was actually one of my complaints about Mummy Demastered is that there are some areas where you have enemies that are constantly

responding, and you don't get those breathers. Like, you just want to stop and take stock and, you know, see where you're going next but no there's a there's a bat hitting you in the back of the head is that I don't know like if you could go back and tweak that would you or do you think like

just that's tough shit get over it? No I actually don't think that's tough shit no I don't I I uh I would I would go back I would go back and tweak that a little bit I think some of the timers it's tough we changed a lot

of the game near the end um there I second-guessed a lot of things. I think it's one of the great things about having Tom on the team versus just only getting to talk to them at lunch. I've seen you guys talk at lunch. You don't even talk about important stuff.

No, we don't. We never do. I mean, that's lunch on the game of both. Which Megamemans the best is always an important thing. That's true. We were this close to settling it. But when you were doing this, And the pressure of, you know, hey, like, the ship date is in a week, you know, you can't, we can't change anything.

We're all not the ship date necessarily, but like the lockdown day where it needs, you know, pencils are down. It's only in test. We can't tune any numbers. We can't change anything. Can't alter, like, one platform. You know, there's a lot of second guessing at the end. And you start wondering, you know, have I played it enough? Have I played it enough the way someone else might play it?

Have I played it too much the way I've gotten used to playing it? And I think with some of the enemies and how frequently they spawn, you know, I probably would go back and evaluate that because I think, you know, when you're first making it, you're a big fear is that it will be too easy or it will be too empty, you know, and because there were times when, you know, I would have a room and I'd have either some ravens or some bats, which tend to spawn from off the side of the screen. And it is interesting watching people play and just thinking,

I shot all of them, and now they should be gone. It's like, well, but it's not an empty room. This is, I mean, it would be a completely empty room if nothing else came in, so it was trying to be like more of the Bedusa heads from Castlevania. But I had some instances where nothing was showing up, and it felt pretty empty, and it felt pretty fine. And then another time I play it, it's like, why are there so many of these guys showing up at the same time?

And so he had to balance that. And I had, Tom was talking me down off a ledge many times, where it's like, should we change this? Should we change us? Like, this is wrong, right? This isn't, it's like, it's fine, it's fine. That thing's fine. You second guess all of it.

And actually, we are working on a patch of the game right now because there are some bugs. There's been some bugs people have found. We're trying to, you know, fix some of those issues. One of the things that we are also changing is the death mechanic a little bit. You know, when you die and you get all your gear back, you get 50% of your health back currently. but when you're at the end of the game it is too much of a slog to go back

and farm because sometimes the health isn't dropping as frequently because it's just the randomization and I thought health was dropping a lot more than it was because at the very end you know funny enough a week before your pencil is down

I was playing through the game again and when you're developing is you play in fits and starts it's like well I'm going to play and you play for a half hour and it's like oh we got a meeting you know it's like you don't necessarily pick up from that same spot that same save spot so you have to you know play through different different times try different things and it was a day where I got to play through the entire game in one sitting and got to the final boss and I screwed something up and I actually died and I went back to the save room and I had

no health I got my gear back from the United Asia and I had no health left and my health was at like 38 out of a thousand or whatever and it's like wait a minute like this sucks. This is awful. And now I've got to go back. How am I got my ammo? And so, um, you know, there wasn't an ammo cash in the room with a safe spot at that point either. So it's like, well, okay, people want their ammo right before the final boss refill all the end. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like, should I put this in? Like we got to submit tomorrow. Should I be doing this? Tom, is this okay. And you're like, no, this makes sense. It looks good. Like, okay. And it works. And I tested it and worked fine. And then even then it was, this is too much to have to grind for

health. Let's bump it up to 50%. Am I overdoing it? Is this too much? Is it, is that going to make it too easy for people. And so you start, you wonder if you're second guessing because you second guess so many other things or if you're actually evaluating it the way you should be because it's a constant state of panic. So what we're going to be doing is, you know, there's been a lot of feedback on it. A lot of people are frustrated, I think rightly so. And the thing that we've updated it with is when you die and you kill your undead agent, your health is restored, you get 100 health per health pack, you get back. So if you, you know, your health was at 38,

when you killed the undid agent, reclaimed your gear, and you have 10 health packs, your health will be 1,038. So it doesn't 100% it, but a bunch of health will drop, too, so you would basically get 100%. Because it was too much of a slap on the wrist, especially for the end game people. And when you're designing a mechanic like the death state, and when you're testing it out in test case scenarios,

When you're implementing it, it's, oh, well, let's try it out. Oh, hey, this works. Oh, cool. I got some health back. Or, you know, I might have one health pack because I'm testing it early in the game. You go, well, I can get my health. This is good. All right, move on.

And then you get good at playing your own game and you don't intentionally die. But I guess, you know, could have been worse. But, I mean, we recognize that. We recognize the frustration that some players have had. And I think it's important to, you know, to, you know, recognize when you've kind of made, you know, mistake. I don't have to want to say a mistake, but, I mean, I'm not ashamed to say that it's you, you make decisions that you go back later and go, man, we shouldn't have done that, you know?

So for whatever reason and for I don't, there's not a way to skip the story. It's like, why can't we press start to skip past this dialogue? My son's playing it. Now I'm like, I wrote the dialogue. This sucks. I don't want to have to sit here and read all this. I want to just get on with the game. So, yeah.

But, yeah, hopefully, that seems to be the number one issue people have had, aside from, you know, not being good at fighting enemies, which, you know, I might look into it. With enemies, the other, the difficult thing to balance is, you know, we wanted it to be possible to get through the whole game with the starting rifle because you are losing weapons to your undid agents. If you only had two weapons, you'll lose them both. You have to be able to get there. It has to be very possible to get back there with the starting rifle. so at the start before weapons are all implemented we're playing through everything with a standard rifle and it feels challenging and hard

and then you get the rocket launcher or something that just destroys everything on screen and now suddenly the rooms that felt like they were decently challenging are feel empty because everything dies immediately and so then the answer to that is put in more respawning bats but then if you go through with a starting rifle now it's super hard

so there is a very delicate balance to strike just when you have so many elements and some them are so powerful, but you still have to be realistically able to get through with the normal gun, or any gun load out the player chooses. You know, there's a lot of things

to keep track up. So sometimes the rooms get too hard. Sometimes they're too easy. And then it's also, we're we know we're making a 16-bit style game that someone might pick up because they heard it's fun, but they don't necessarily love this type of game, so it has to be possible for them to play and enjoy it too.

And we want to be ambassadors for this style of game. This is what's fun about it. and then it's so sorry like did they like that they cleared out the room of all enemies or is it boring now because there's nothing to shoot like it's yeah it's yeah it'd be tough to take like like do we like this because we always put up with it as kids

or is it actually good or you know like there's a there's a lot to consider so I don't know from the perspective of, from the perspective of someone who doesn't make games, but thinks he knows a lot about them, I actually like the sense of satisfaction. you get from clearing out a room. You're like, I've had a hard-fought battle, and now I can take a breather, look around, figure out what to do next. So, you know, like the, the sarcophagy dudes who pop out of the sand. They're the best, right? Those are the absolute worst. They hit so, they hit so hard. Like, every time I hit one of those, I'm like, I might as

well just, like, go back to my save file because it's going to take so long to grind up health. Why don't you just jump over around? Boy, I'd love to, but they pop up all the time. And, you know, When you're taking stock of the platforms, you're like, okay, where am I going now? Oh, God, that thing just hit me. Would you say they fire too soon? I would. I would say that. So, you know.

Yeah, and the reason they fire too soon is when you first enter that area and you go to the left and you're running through there when you have the speed boost by the time you get there. And if they pop up too slow, they just pop up and go off screen and then nothing happens to the point where sometimes they just, you weren't even seeing their animation when they first went in. So it's like, what even was that? And we don't want things, I don't want things firing off screen. So, yeah, I sped them up a little bit. And, but if you use the harpoon, I believe it can take them out and watch a shot.

So if you have to find the harpoon. Well, well, it comes before there. You know, you don't see them before you have the harpoon. So you should, you should be okay. Delicate balance. Yeah, it is a delicate balance. and some things just aren't balanced perfectly. It's not a perfect game, you know, but I think it's a fun game.

It was fun to make, and it was made pretty quickly, and there was a lot of guessing of, well, this will be a really good decision, or it won't be, and, you know, we'll tune it until it's, you know, pretty good, and that might have been one of those scenarios for many people. It's tough, because I'm not a great gamer. I'm not like an amazing, you know, skill-based gamer that can go sit down. I can't play Contra 4. I have never beaten the first stage of Contra 4.

I'm that bad at the game. Yes, I can play this. Maybe part of it is kind of knowing their behavior. And so maybe that helps for me. I forget some of the rooms are in, too, where I like the one will pop up. Like, oh, God, they're in here. Yes, it's right. I need to jump over him.

Yeah, I mean, I don't mean to hold your feet over the fire because I wouldn't be here talking to you if I didn't think this was a good game. But, yeah, definitely, like, there are some. There are some parts where I'm like, you just ice them out. Totally. I would just be like, oh, it's you. No, I just want to talk to Matt. No, and yeah, and I welcome it. I absolutely do.

Like, I want to, it's good to get this kind of feedback and then like talk through it. Yeah, I don't know how far you are into the patch, but my feeling is that the health balance issues could be really taken up a lot or, you know, cleared up a lot if you use the Super Metroid drop mechanic where if you have maxed out on something, you don't get that drop. Like, if you have full missiles in Super Metroid, it doesn't, the enemies don't drop missiles. Right. If you have full health, then they don't drop health, unless you have full missiles and health, in which case you just get random stuff. So we actually, we actually had that originally. So wait, wait, wait, but if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is if you have full health,

but you don't have full missiles, you will get missiles. Well, we do do that. So, yeah, so you know what? I'm going to look into it again. I don't know. Like, I spent a lot of time farming health, even though I had full ammo, but I was still getting a lot of ammo drops. Okay. That, I think, I wonder if that got fixed, or if that was something we were fixed.

We had a couple different systems. One was what you're describing. We tweaked it for some reason. Right. I don't remember why. I don't know. I think you got tweaked it yet. It might have been.

Well, the intent was that. But the also the intent was, well, when you're full of most everything, I think there might still be some randomization. for, so you're not only ever getting the one thing. So it's not incrementally choosing, like, I'm going to fill up all your health, and I'm going to help all your machine gun and all your flamethrower, like one after the other, sequentially. Yeah, that's not how Super Metroid does it even.

No, it is, it isn't. But that could be the result of not, you know, explaining something correctly or having it being implemented a certain way. So I think in order to avoid that potential scenario, there might be randomization for that. Because I feel like I recognized recently something was happening where I just kept getting

harpoons. It was like I'm low on health. Why am I only getting harpoons? More harpoons. I think I'm full on harpoons. More harpoons. Why am I still getting harpoons? And I don't remember if that was the week, it's all a blur now. I don't remember if that was a week before we submitted or if it was post-submission and it's in the patch.

But what we didn't, well, I think a note that came from on high, whether it was internally or externally, was that you should never get nothing. So if you kill an enemy, even if you're full health and full ammo, they should drop something because not 100% of the time, but they shouldn't be told not to drop something.

So if they would have dropped something, they still would, even if you're full on everything. That way you feel like you are collecting something, you are gaining something, that you're not killing for no reason. And the idea of like these randomized drops and balancing that, I know that's a real challenge. I've seen games made by people who should have known better, who messed it up. Like, if you look back at Legacy of the Wizard, you have, like, three items that can drop,

and you have meters to fill them up, and you'll get more of whichever meter is the least, which is fine for a while, but to attack enemies, you have to use up your magic meter, like your basic attack. So after a while, you're magic meter deplete, so you're just getting magic refills, and it takes longer for you to get gold and for you to get health and so on and so forth. So then it turns into a slog. You're like, oh, I don't want to attack enemies, but I need to attack enemies. But, uh, yeah. It makes sense on paper.

And I think we had the same discussion early on development on this where, where I think we, we check. I think, I think we value health first, where we want to make sure you get your health back first and foremost because you always have a weapon. Um, but that there still will be randomization on, you know, scalability of like, how low is your health and what are the chances that'll be a big health versus a small health. Um, and maybe I just had really bad luck with my randomization. that too. That too, because I've seen people just like, you know, I've actually called programmers over to my desk and I'm like, this isn't working. It's not. And then I show them. It's like, why the heck is it working now? Like, why is it when I show you? You know, it's the frog from Warner Brothers cartoons. It's like, he was singing a minute ago. So that's basically how it feels sometimes. You know, I've seen, I've seen Twitch streamers. You know, they do three things in a row. It's like, well, you do it three more times. You could have. the complete opposite effect. So it can be hard to know if it's your own perception or not. But you know what?

I'm glad you brought it up because I'm telling you right now, when we leave this, you know, this little get-together, I'm going to go talk to the programmer about, you know, let's look at it again, just make sure before this patch goes out that it's working ultimately because it still might not be. And I would be remiss if I didn't. Is there anything else you'd like to say? No, those were really my big complaints.

game. Everything else, I really liked, you know, the look of it and the sound, obviously. I like the structure of the levels. I like, you know, for the most part, the placement of enemies, not so much the bats that keep responding and shooting at you when they pass at a certain, like, sometimes I just want to stop and look around. Let me, please let me. At least in Castlevania, the bats don't shoot fireballs at you. Oh, they're too easy. You don't have a gun in Paso. There you go. See? See? All right. Well, unless you have any directional whip. Yeah, but that game is also really easy.

Yeah, that's true. But no, I like the concept of the death mechanic, even though it doesn't always work to the best of intentions. But the idea there is really interesting. Was that an idea that came from the very beginning, or did that sort of pop in midway through development? No, that came from the beginning. That was sort of, so I was basically assigned the project

based off a pitch and agreement that came before I joined the project and it was, yeah, here's the game and the death mechanic was a key part of it to help it stand out. And because we've done death mechanics in games before, I think we had an interesting one in Aliens Infestation, which people

bring up. And I think this was in that same vein where it's like, well, let's come up the cool death mechanic that will be something different so they'll just die and game over. and I think a lot of people are saying like, oh, you're copying Dark Souls and it's two

Dark Souls. This is what happens when you copy Dark Souls in a game that shouldn't copy Dark Souls. And it's like, okay, well, yeah, maybe. You know, and it did come from the beginning, and it had to get kind of tailored down, like, more and more and more. And it's like, okay, well, if you die, there's a guy there and he's going to fight you, and

he'll be really as hard as you are to fight. And it's like, oh, that's too much. At the start, it was just the basic idea. When you die, you become a thing that knew you fights. So none of the details were worked out at first. No, no. So we had to figure out what that meant.

And it was, you know, what's the extreme case where there's like 50 of these guys in a room and they're really, really tough to fight. And it was like, okay, we need to, like, limit how many there are and, you know, how challenging they're going to be. And, you know, it was actually the programmer who was working on them, he was so excited, he was trying to make him way too elaborate. He made a very challenging, almost AI-style

player, I'm like, this is too much. You've got to dumb him down. He's got to be more just like an enemy, and he's still challenging. He still pursues you. And it's like, so you just wanted to stand there and just walk like a zombie? He's like, yes. It's like, oh, come on, he can, like, chase you and fly it. We should convince Nintendo to let his remake Metroid Fusion

and put the SACs in with his original code. I think you'll have to line up behind Mercury Steam, though. That was how they got Samus Returns was they tried to pitch a Metroid Fusion remake And it was like, no, but Yeah, for serious

But you should, you know, sell them your code or something, I don't know We'll see about that Or, you know, maybe you do like a death match Whoever wins gets the right to redo Fusion Were there any other They can take it But I will say that like, I think with this update It kind of feels like how it should have been

Where it's you There's like you drop all your geese and rather than just sitting there and you just go collect it, there's just one challenge to face versus I'd face the challenge. Now I have the challenge of grinding to get all my health back. Now it's, okay, I drop my gear, I got to go back, face off, get my gear from this thing, and that's a little bit of a challenge. You get it back and you feel a sense of relief.

It's like, okay, that's behind me. Now I can move on and it makes so much more sense. And it works really well. Were there any other, like, stipulations, things that had to be in the other, like, stipulations, restrictions, things that had to be in the game based on the license and the licensee or licensor? Or beyond the death mechanic, was it all

pretty much just like, you know, quite a year? Yeah, the death mechanic was more our idea. And it was, but it was based off of, it kind of fits hand in hand with, like, well, who is the core villain of this and what are her powers and it is like raising the dead? It's like, oh, Eureka, we can do that.

This will work perfectly. You know, there are a lot of stipulations, but just it needs to stay within brand of the movie, you know, because the group we worked directly with at Universal, they were really excited to work with us because we've done some stuff with them in the past and they really wanted to make a game with us

because they like the games we make and like working with us. And then as the game was gaining traction internally and people, they were showing screenshots and the concept art and the pixel art and then people there started to notice it

and cares, that's such really cool. Like, let's start making sure it's like really good. And then what, you know, someone in the film department thinks is really good and important, it doesn't necessarily line up a good gameplay or something that allows for a lot of creative freedom. So, you know, even though they have these grand plans

for this expanded universe, we, and at the start of the game, we had grand plans for just this game of having little hints and nods to all the monster movies. When it went through their approvals, there were people that were saying, like, no, no, no, it needs to be more like our mummy movie, you know, so you can't

use this thing from bride of Frankenstein. You can't use this thing from a creature from the Black Lagoon. Like those aren't in the movie yet. It's like, well, yeah, but it's in your universe and it'll be perfect water in me. We got all this water. Like, let's put it in the creature from the Black Lagoon or you know, just pieces of it. It's like no, no, no. This is

the mummy movie. It needs to look like the mummy. And so that did put a little bit of a, you know, a dampet on things. But for the most part, they were pretty on board with a lot of the stuff. You know, with some good convincing sometimes.

just, you know, the head of games over there, when it's like, yeah, I want to do a big lizard, you know, and it's like, well, if you make it kind of Egyptian, maybe we can get away with it. It's like, oh, okay. And they look up, like, you know, Egyptian gods. And it's like, oh, there's one that's kind of, it's named Omit. It's got the head of an alligator, body of a lion and butt of a hippo. And then we ran up the chain and they're like, all right, whatever, it's Egyptian, sure. And so it's, you know, finding a way to, like, win those battles.

Yeah. Yeah, so my understanding is that they've abandoned, Universal's abandoned this. attempt at creating a franchise. Is that correct? I don't know. I don't think so. I think I read that. I think I read that.

I think people are seeing that they're reading it as that. Okay. But I think just we don't know because we're just talking to the games people sometimes and they don't necessarily know either. But, I mean, it doesn't seem like it because they didn't cancel the, what, the pride of friends. Did they retooling it, I think they're retooling it. I think they're retooling it. Because I think they got rid of, what, the director and some other person.

And, I mean, because the movie, you know, ostensibly. bombed so and it didn't review very well and you know they're never going to abandon the characters but I mean for one understood the first Dracula untold or Dracula retold or something they were trying they were trying to do the same thing

right but that didn't work out yet but it didn't work out I think with this one we'll see you know I have no idea but I think that you know they might be might try one more time because that's I kind of take it as that I mean, I got rid of those guys, and they're delaying the release of the next one.

Well, maybe they're going to find a way to make it, you know, fit in with all that stuff. But we'll see. I don't know. And, you know, and honestly, though, the fact that they even did this, I mean, it might mean that if they are retooling it, it's probably going to need less action. Who was the director, was it, Katzenberg or something? I don't know. But it probably means that maybe there won't be prodigium in the next one. maybe it won't be as action heavy

maybe it'll be more horror maybe more like get out or you know some other things right now that have more horror in it black mirror you know whatever that that creepy thing um so uh or the shape of water

it's gonna have more like more gamer I mean shape of water could be like creature from the black lagoon but sexy and that's the thirsty creature from the black that's exactly what it is that Toro was saying like what he told I listened to interview with the actor who played the monster in it and like that's what he said

He's always wanted to do when he used to watch the Creature of Black Lagoon as a kid. I wanted them to get together and run off together. And so that's kind of the idea. So you got to know, Universal's going to see that if it does well and just go, we've got to change how we do this stuff. And it's like, well, no more action for Digium, guys. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it kind of feels like they said, well, Marvel does these movies and so we should have Shield also. And I don't know that that's necessarily the way to go about.

Something like that. It doesn't mean it's not the way to go about it, though, either, right? Sure. Or we keep making games with it. We could. And the movies could be whatever they want. That'd be fun. I mean, because we basically, we pay for the game ourselves.

This is an independent game with a license attached, which is really weird. But it was, you know, they, you know, Unable didn't publish it. They didn't pay a dime to us to make the game. Right. Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah. So we were actually looking for investors at different points.

It's like, hey, how about some money to make this? And there was cool people that were on board early on, but then around like February, no one was biting. And we decided, well, let's just, we'll just fund it. But we liked what we saw so far. We believed in it. We thought it'd make a really cool shooter. And so we just paid for it out of pocket.

So it's an independent game with a mummy license, which is, you know. That said, it's always had the mummy license. Yes. It was not a different game. name of a game, which I've seen all the other ways. Development began on this. In pre-development started in December. And actual development started in January.

Like, nothing was made for this game before that, like, at all. So it is really funny to see, like, oh, they just took some other game and, like, slap the mummy license on. It's like, nope, this was the mummy from the get-go. And, I mean, the backgrounds should be the most telling. I mean, granted, the enemies can be kind of generic. I feel like if it was anything else, the enemies might have been more, you know, creative and they weren't in some cases like we're just using birds and bats and mice and it's like

well that's what's in the movie you know but we it was it was dokey dokey mummy but yeah we had to change that um um but yeah all the background cojo but every background is is directly in the movie and not not not people probably saw the movie to be able to make that comparison if you if you saw the movie and played the game you'd probably notice a lot more similarities I'm sure someday when I'm on a flight to like San Francisco or Japan. I will watch it on the little three-inch screen in front of me.

I don't think they put the audience through that. The screen is smaller than your Switch where you can play the game. That's true. It's true. It's interesting. It's funny. Visually, like, it's got some really good cinematography and, you know, good effects.

Like, the opening scenes with the actual sarcophagus and the mercury, and it's really neat. There's some really cool looks to it. I think had a lot of potential. It's just the story just kills it. Yeah, and I have a hard time being interested in anything Tom Cruise does

these days. Although, on the other hand, the actress who plays the mummy, I can't remember her. Sophia Vitella? Yes. She's always really cool when she's in stuff. She was great in Atomic Blonde. She was great in Star Trek. Oh, that's right. She was in Star Trek. I was thinking Kingsman, though.

Okay. She was like the lady with the crazy, like, prosthetic legs who did crazy karate stuff. It was crazy. Sorry. She's interesting. She was a few own character in the beginning.

Yeah, pretty much. She was basically a No More Hero's character put in an action movie. She was Killer 5. Sure. Education is great. Education is great. Student loans? Not so much. Those monthly payments stretch out ahead of you for years. They can spiral out. of control if you're not careful, but credible.com can help you make them manageable again. Credible.com is an online marketplace for student loan refinancing. It takes about two minutes

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and it's not like Universal owns this game code or concept. Like, do you want to take another crack at this? Do you want to make a sequel or some sort of spiritual successor or do you want to move on to other things now and try your hand at new ideas? Oh, man. You know, I'd love to do it again, honestly. I had a lot of fun with it.

I hope we get to do another one because I'd want to, my biggest concern actually would be is if Brider Frankenstein is supposed to be the next one if we had to do a game based on that and it's like, okay, well, now how do we shoot her and how do we get these Egyptian moves out of

the, you know, Frankenstein's lab or whatever and trying to think like that. And because I think you know, I'd want, I have a lot of fun making it. I've never done a game like this, you know, an open-ended

everything I've made has been linear. I wouldn't call it open world, but it's like the closest thing. I've always wanted to. So it was a lot of fun. And I'd love to do it again. But, you know, I don't have anything else that's like I'm, you know, not going to do right now that I'd rather rather do. But I don't know if we will be able to do another one.

I think there might be some legal gray area between, you know, who owns it. And, you know, if we can't. and can do something as identical as this, you know, like how different it will have to be to, you know, be different enough from this game that we can, you know, get away with it. So. Yeah, I wasn't necessarily thinking, like, you know, a direct sequel to this, but take the gameplay concepts,

not even necessarily the mechanics, but the structure, the overall philosophy behind it. Well, I mean, I'd want to go either way. So if, like, Universal said, hey, we want you to do another one of these, I'd be, yeah, cool, let's do it. Like, this was really fun. Let's do another one. I think we can, you know, build on these mechanics. and do a couple of things and do more exploration

and take yourselves to a new locale and do these things. Is that tied to a movie? Is it its own thing? We'll see. And then also, hey, let's do a spiritual success or something else. Castleroy. Castleroy. I think they make a topical cream for that. I mean, I really want to do another pixel game.

I mean, so it's just so much fun working at pixels. It's so much fun stamping tile sets and just building a gym in a gray box and then stamping

like really nice pixel art in there. There are tools on this project were really easy to use so it was really you know, in the 16 mid days you were literally taking tiles

and stamping them down to make the level and then as games got more complex that went away and now to make a pixel style game before you have to kind of sish through all these levels

of like well there's a 3D engine and how are we using it And how did we build a level? Whereas this was like, yep, you just stamp tiles out. And so you can have a level in 10 minutes. Like, if you wanted me to do something really fast, I could do really fast. We can test it, and then we could modify it, and now it's done in the game. And you're arting it at the same time.

Like, it's just really easy. And so I think way forward directors, especially having grown up with all those games, it's like, this is nice. What's in my head can just go into the computer, and I'm playing my game. So the next game up is MummyMaker, right? Super Mummy Maker. All your favorite enemies from the Mummy. Not with the Mevers gone.

Sorry, guys. Oh, shoot. That's right. That's really a shit. But what we were saying, Tom, it does kind of provoke a thought, and I think we'll land on this, but this style of game, like this approach to game. And by that, I mean sort of the 2D platformer adaptation of a movie. Like, you don't see those anymore. This game is such a creation out of time.

It feels like something from a previous generation. But at the same time, like, you have the technology now to make something like that so easily compared to, you know, I was just talking to Matt about the process of creating the original Chanté. And that sounded like just, you know, excruciating because it was so limited the technology that he was using to make a game for Game Boy Color. I don't know. That just strikes me as interesting. I don't know if there's really a question there. It's more of an observation, but I'm curious to hear your perspectives on it.

I mean, we went to that. It used to be like everyone got licenses. Capcom did, Konami did. That's what the movie companies did. Then the movie companies got their own game studios who handled it. And now you generally don't see it anymore. But it's funny because during TMNT Danger of the Ouse is when the Michael Bay Turtle's movie came out.

and they were almost coming out at the same time. And the whole project we've been telling the teen, like, this isn't based on the movie. Like, this is just a game. There's also a movie. This isn't the movie game. So if you don't like that movie, don't hold that against our game.

It's over and over again. And then immediately after that, I went to goosebumps the game, you know, tied into the movie. And we did that. And then we did Mummy tied into a movie. It's just a weird flip-flop. I don't know.

That's my random thought on it. I mean, I mean, I think you kind of changed what he was talking about, but, I mean, I've done a lot of less and stuff. I did a, I did a lately, though. Not lately, you know, if I go. I have, though, but I did ducttails, ductiles remastered, and just before that, I guess I did switch force in between, but I had that happy feet. But you did ducktails before it was a new cartoon.

It wasn't really tied in. It wasn't tied in, yeah. There was still, but there's still, you have a lot of the same hurdles. You know, you still have to go through the licensure. You still have to get a lot of intercourse. Internal approvals has to go through a lot of hands. I guess less hands than if it was a license at the time, but there's still all that to deal with.

I think there might be less of a time crunch to coincide at the release of something now. So it would be a little different. But I think there's a lot of similarities there. But still, these, you know, the games you're talking about are more of an exception. Like now when you see movie license tie-ins, they tend to be on mobile.

And they tend to be like some super cheap, flimsy, like flash-based candy crush rip-off or something or you know puzzle wobble rip off um you don't really see like this kind of game where it is structured like a classic action game and clearly a lot of thought and care was put into the aesthetics and the visuals um it it just seems like i said sort of a product out of time but yeah that's what i like about it and that's kind of where the spirit of it lives because i mean universal came to us and said what would you want to make they wanted three games and one of them was a VR experience

at the actual theaters so I guess there's like these you know VR machines they have there the other one was a mobile version that Night Shift did and they did like the Mr. Robot game that I think won some awards actually and they did oxen free and they

wanted us to do a game also like what would you want to make and it was well we'd want to do a Metroidbanian shooter like no one's going to like that's just pie in the sky It's like, you know, and that's what they wanted. And it's like, well, let's do it. You know, let's make something of a bygone era that's, you know, fun to play that we just, we just, you know, want to play.

It's like junk food. You know, I just like, I want to enjoy this, you know. It reminds me of so much that I love. For 30 years, movies based on games, sorry, games based on movies, I've had this reputation of sucking, even though they haven't always suck. You know licensed games, ha-ha, but Batman on the N-E-S was good was based on the movie in the air quotes. Goonies 2?

Goonies 2. Guine's 2 fantastic. But there's always gems of like, oh, this is actually really good. Oh, this is actually really good. The Riddick game was good. That's the one that always comes up. Rickett, Riddick, the Pirate of Butcher Bay.

Yeah. And so it's just like, that is nice that nowadays, because movie licensed games are often mobile junk that none of us real gamers would play working on something like Mother who was like, well, let's make a good game and let's make it like a game we would want to make not just what we have to make a game based on the movie

but do our best. That's how we approach everything too. I mean, we did Happy Feet 2. I directed a game based on Happy Feet 2, which was not as good of the movie as the first Happy Feet, and that's the saying a lot. We had fun developing. On paper, we should have been the most depressed

and frustrated team having to make this stupid kids game, but because at the same time, we had a Silent Hill game internal, we had Blood Rain, we had a centipede game, which is like, oh, we're making a new centipede, that should be really cool. We had, like, something else I think, too. Double Dragon, yeah.

I think it was before Double Dragon Dayon, because it was Blood Rain. Right, right. But it regardless, I mean, we got some really cool opportunities and titles. But the team had a lot of fun. Like, we had good morale on the team, and we were enjoying ourselves while we were making it and, you know, had some

good times and everyone on the team cared about the job they put in at previous places I've worked I've had guys say oh it doesn't matter you know I said well this menu structure like we need these menu like it's not alphabetizing correctly it's like no one's going to buy it who cares you know that that kind of thought can permeate um but you know when when we make a license game like when we did four you know it's the same thing it's like you know this is such a cool opportunity list it's really cool thing um and and we have the highest rated Sega Marvel game combo of all their

games being Captain America or an Ironman that they released before they had the license that was taken away. All the directors are good at becoming the fan of the thing they're working on. When I worked on Adventure Time I'd only seen the very first short and it was

like four seasons in on the show. So I had to become the Adventure Time experts. I watched all of Adventure Time really fast because I needed to be representing that brand as well as they did when I was at Konami, any of the Konami brands. And so that's, I'm not the only one that does that here. Austin does it.

Sometimes you luck out, and sometimes you're a big fan of the thing you've been handed. Right. I mean, did you read goosebumps when you were? No. Oh, okay. That's the only better, like, I knew nothing about goosebumps other than it existed, but I knew horror, and so I wanted to do it a cool horror. I liked Shadowgate.

It was a shadow game, so I'll take my love of Shadowgate and horror. I will read a bunch of goosebumps books and then make this the most authentic goose bump thing. It's also scary, and fits the genre. Yeah. But like turtle, I'm into turtles and I got danger for the ewes. Yeah. And so that's a cool. Well, see, and I've never, I've never seen dovetails, and I got Dog Tales Your Master. I'm just kidding.

That's a lie. Wouldn't that be awful? Yeah. But it piss some people off. No, I mean, I will say that I didn't remember it that well, and it really reinvigorated, like, my passion, and it really brought it back to, like, my childhood. And the brand, yeah. For lots of people. Well, yeah.

I mean, and with Happy Feed, like, I don't want to do this. But it would end up being a ton of fun. There was some neat stuff. And I had to do a lot of dancing for the animators for the dance moves that were going to go on the game. And again, you get past the embarrassment. It's really good. That's awesome. So finally, like, the name demastered.

Like, why not just call it the mummy? Was that forced on you? Or did you guys say, like, we need to give it a cool subtitle? I, we have, they came to us and said, what do you want to call it? And I said demastered. Was that a riff on DuckTales remaster? It is. It actually was.

It was, and it's really funny to hear people like, why is it a comment? Because what we didn't want to give it was a really generic term, really generic name, really generic subtitle. And the idea is also, you know, if we have the opportunity to do more of these games, well, what's a title that will work across brands, you know, like a black creature from the black lagoon, demastered, you know? and the idea was it is a play on things being remastered and I don't know where there's remastering music

and then remastering games and there's been a lot of games coming out recently called remasters and it's a play on that because there's games that have done this before like Dark Void Zero I mean we are basing it off a game so if we were basing it off a game that was sort of the idea that we are stepping back into the past

of it you know the way that Dark Void Zero was a pixel-based game. What else has done that, besides Dark Void? Was there something else? I'm sure I had examples until you asked. On the spot. Blastermaster's Zero? I don't know.

Maybe. Yeah. I guess that, yeah, it kind of did go through to you. But around the time of Dark Void, you know, there was a couple other things like this where it's like, oh, no, the Gunbolt? There was like Mighty Gunwold. Yeah, Mighty Gunbolt. You know, which is kind of like a reducted version of that.

and I wanted to do something that was playful and it didn't take itself too seriously and it's funny because I just said that and I called people laughs like that's a good idea let's do that and then we put that in the list of titles and went to universal and like no one over there wanted that and we had to go through a bunch of other names and went to this and at the end we're like oh we can go with demasters

it's like oh okay cool we'll call it the mummy demastered so and I think it worked out because you know people know it you recognize that, like, why the heck is, what's with that name? What are they mean? I get it. You hear about demastering. You hear about demakes a lot. Yeah. That's a fun thing that people like to do to like mockups of Bioshock Infinite for Game Boy. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's playing of that. It's playing of the demake and giving it a term that, I think the only other thing that was really using it as a term was a naughty dog had a April Fool's joke where they had either the

last of us or uncharted demastered. And so it was just kind of a funny thing where it looked like an old PCI game back in the day or something or CDI but it was very it was intentional that was the thought process behind it and I'm pretty happy at the title in fact I actually I don't I try to look it up maybe you can look it up and get back to me I don't know if anything before

DuckTales was called remastered in terms of games like I think DuckTales might have been the first game to use that name and then as like title like revisiting an old brand because everything else had used different names like Nintendo for like Mario would use like, well for Game Boy they used DX

like Mario Brothers DX or when they do things. People were they weren't HD was going around a lot at the time. You know it's like HD was the big thing at the time and there's been a little remastered sense so I'd be curious to know. It's starting to trend.

All right. Yeah we did. Sorry. That's okay. So I think that's it. Yeah. Thanks both of you for your time. Any final thoughts before I quit recording? I think you should just play games more and get good so that you may stop killing you

and it'll be a happier for it. I appreciate the input. You're very welcome. I think you really needed to give you that from... I did. No, no, no, thanks for taking the time to come visit us and talk about this. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, there was a lot, a lot of passion went into it. Yeah, a lot of my own... like blood sweat and tears sometimes literally because I kept cutting him with a knife he did often well it cuts for the sweat it was

I spent a lot of late nights crunching on a number of things for the game and a lot of passion went into it and you know hearing you talk about the things that you did recognizing those accomplishments in areas of the game it means a lot

and I'm really happy with the response it's gotten and I hope that anyone that hasn't given it a chance we'll look for this update and maybe you know

give another look because I'm real proud of the game so it'll line up go check the stars check out Nintendo check out our Twitter feed see what's going on and then yeah

yeah where can people follow you on Twitter and so forth yeah so Austin Ivan Smith my screen name is Ivan D-A-S-E-A-S-E-E-A-S-E-E-A-S-E-E-A-S-E-A-S S-H-Smith-Dash, the word dash. It makes no sense.

My name does not have a hyphen in it. My friends always put hyphens in it. And then when we used to make movies as kids, they would put the word dash in the middle just to mess with me, and I hated them for it, but then I adopted it. And whenever I have to call in a place and give them my name, like, what's your email address to, like, phone companies or whatever?

And they're like, what? So I should abandon it. But sorry, we just talk at length about my Twitter name. Ivan Dash Smith. How about you, Tom? This has been Jen words. No. I'm Tom.

You can follow me on Twitter at hypnocrite, like hypnotize and hypocrite. I mean, nothing. Sorry. Having to say your Twitter, like, handle out loud, like, kind of sucks. Yeah, it really makes you stop and question your life choices. What's yours again?

Mine's GameSpite. That's a good one, though. It was... So there's a story there, actually. I was going to create a comic about, like, an insider perspective on, being in games journalism and so everyone worked

for a publication called GameSpite which had a logo that looked very similar to GameSpotts and I made like three or four of those comics and they were fun but then I didn't have time to do it because I was putting too much time into the artwork and they were good

so that died they were all making fun of people I were not making fun of but they were riffing on people I worked with at OneUp.com back in like 2005 2006 this was a long time ago and I've changed my website named to GameSpite.net

and that stuck and then I I originally registered on Twitter as one thing back in like 2007 when I first started And then I was like, this is stupid Twitter's the worst So I deleted that account And then everyone started using Twitter again and I was like, fine So I'd re-registered with GameSpite This has been Twitter talk

Yep, now you know And also be sure you can follow Way Forward at Way Forward And then find out about like any updates and cool new games and going on Play all of our games, play goosebumps All right, thanks guys Thank you. If you're a student loanhaver like me, you know they can completely wipe you out if you don't get a handle on them. How do you do that? Credible.com.

All you have to do is visit credible.com slash retro. Answer a few questions, and right away, you'll get real rates, not ranges of rates, from up to nine different lenders. Credible.com is completely free to use, and checking your rates will not affect your credit score, so you really have nothing to lose. The average user who refinances through Credible.com saves almost $19,000 over the life of their loan. Just think about what you could do with $19,000. Pay off your student loans faster or lower your monthly payment, whatever works for you. And right now, Retronauts listeners will get a $200 welcome bonus when refinancing through Credible.com slash Retro. Don't wait.

Go to credible.com slash retro and click Find My Rate to see if you could save by refinancing. Remember, that's C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E-D. dot com slash retro go to credible dot com slash retro today for a two hundred dollar welcome bonus All right. So for the second segment this episode, I am on Skype with Zach Manko of Megakat Studios. And Mega Cat, actually, I don't know that much about you guys. I know that you make NES games in the year of Our Lord 2018. That's right. That's a pretty niche business you've got going right there.

Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty deep market there. Yeah, so tell me, what's the deal with Megacad? Is that like the core of your business? Is that actually viable? Like, is there enough of a market for new NES games that you guys can, you know, pay your mortgage and feed the kids? So the retro thing is definitely part of identity, but it's not all of what we do. We've been doing contract game dev for about a decade,

and we decided we wanted to do some projects for ourselves, something that we were passionate about. So we make retro games not just for the Nintendo, but Sega Genesis, well, our first Super Nintendo title this year. And there is a market for it. There's enough of a retro community where stuff like that can still get purchased, still get appreciated and still be enjoyed.

For us, it's definitely more of, you know, wish fulfillment. There's a 10-year-old Zach running around somewhere, wanting to high-five me very badly. for making NES games, but like I said, it's just definitely part of what we do. We also have our first major PC title, Logjammer, is coming out in March, and it's actually an upmake of one of our NES games. So, yeah, we do everything from the retro up to VR, so everything in between. Okay. So tell me a little bit about Mega Cat Studios beyond just, you know, what you shared there. Like, how long have you guys been around? Have you worked on any games that you can talk

about that I have heard of? I've primarily do writing and then some project management and some little bit of game design. So our first NES title for 2018 is a title called Little Medusa. It's an action puzzler game.

So I did a lot of writing on that. I did a lot of level design. We had a great team on that one. Everyone was pretty excited about it. So, you know, there's a lot of charm to it. It came out, you know, making it was kind of a joy. yeah I have a I guess an advanced copy of that I didn't realize it wasn't out yet

that you guys sent me and it's a it's a really charming little game it reminds me a lot of adventures of Lolo but at the same time it feels like you know um stylistically in terms of the visual design it reminds me of some of the later NES games stuff like fire and ice or um I don't know like like some of the games that came along later you know that like 1992-93 as the NES was winding down and dev started to really kind of push the boundaries of what the NES could do. It has that kind of that visual style to it. Definitely, yeah, Lolo and Kickle Cubicle, we love those titles. We love those games.

This is one of the cool things is we can take inspiration from those and kind of create like a spiritual successor. And that's definitely what Little Madusa is. And we can also, since, you know, the Nintendo's 20 years old, 30 years old at this point, We know how to make the more advanced graphics and the more advanced effects and things like that. Our guys are getting really talented in those regards. And we're also adding more modern features. Like we added achievements to Little Medusa, for example. And there's a new game plus.

And if you do so well, you can actually unlock a hidden world, a hidden boss, secret ending, things like that. So lots of replay value. So, yeah. I take you guys build these games from the ground up. They're not just like ROM hacks, right? No, they're definitely not ROM hacks. or just, you know, just, you know, spright rips or anything like that. It's all original code, all original assets, all original stories, you know, from the ground up, like you said, definitely.

Yeah, because I noticed there is definitely a very familiar feel to all the games that I've tried of yours. You know, like almost a hero is very reminiscent of River City Ransom, double dragon, but it's not quite them. And, what is it, creepy brawlers is very much in the vein of punchout, but it's clearly not just like a punchout rom hack. so that's uh yeah that's a um it's a pretty interesting uh approach to take i think yeah it's hard with the retro libraries being and being as extensive as they are you're always going to run into something somewhere where you know oh someone did it first and um we always try to you know pay respects where we can but then build upon it you know do a little bit more add some new features make it worthwhile even in 2018 like creepy brothers is a great example you know

we get the monster punchout thing a lot, but every boss has two or three evolutions. You beat him once, and then he comes back with a different pattern. So it's actually quite challenging. I can't make it really past the first or second guy there. It's very difficult. So we do things to make it worth your while, make it worth the money. We put a lot of love and time into it. Yeah, I definitely noticed you guys seem to go with the crazy hard aspect of Nintendo games.

All of them are really, really difficult. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's one of the things retro is always known for is, you know, being extremely difficult, frustrating but fair. We like to call it frustrating but fun, you know, rage quitworthy, that type of thing. We actually had a little Medusa. We were just at MagFest. We had it on a big screen, and I saw the game over screen quite a lot that weekend. You mentioned that you get the, you know, monster punchout thing a lot with creepy brawlers, but I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with, you know, with building off what's come before. The question is, what can. you add to it. Definitely. And as we grow as a company, as we get a little bit older and everything, we're starting to, you know, be a little bit more, I guess, objective in our game design as far as wanting to do things with the goal and purpose and make some, not just like, okay, here's the classics and how can we build upon it. You know, we're starting to think about what can we do different? What can we do that's, you know, really new? So a good example is actually almost Hero 2. So Almost Hero 1, like you mentioned, definitely has reminiscent of Double Dragon, River

City Ransom, that type of thing. Almost Zero 2, we're aiming to do weapon swapping, so you'll have three different sets of weapons, and to do that, we actually had to do some pretty cool things on the dev side, not just the art, but the dev side, to be able to fit that on an NES card and make it work graphically because of the limitations of the system, things like bank swapping and doing some nifty things with the memory. Like I said, as we get older and more experienced as a company, we're able to kind of push these older systems a little bit further, you know, bleed more creativity and gameplay out of them.

Yeah, on the technical side, that's something that I find really interesting is, you know, a lot of people who are making NES games nowadays are either using like really cheap integrated circuits or, you know, like very kind of low-grade materials or else they're just doing, you know, they're flashing existing ROMs. But your cartridges are translucent. So I can see what's inside. And it looks like you guys have built these things from the ground up and they look pretty

well made. Like there's, you know, the proper arrangement of circuits and everything. But then you have like a logo, a special logo embossed on it or not embossed, but silk screened on it. So that's something you don't really see a lot. I'm curious about that aspect of your business. yeah we definitely aimed from the beginning to have high quality materials all original boards things like that so we're not you know we're not taking apart a 30 year old game or reusing the parts or anything it's all new parts and the same mindset goes into our packaging you know it's a high quality box high quality manual we really wanted to create collectors pieces for people a lot of the retro community is focused around collecting so you know we offer some pretty cool things in that regard the limited edition of creepy brawers actually has a really sweet acrylic shell It's pretty cool. It has like bats and there's this cool like skyline with the graveyard and like haunted castle and crescent moon. It's really neat looking. So stuff like that, you know, we really want to push the physical aspect.

Does that aspect of it make it difficult for you to price these at a reasonable level? Definitely, yeah. It's difficult to, you know, especially with wholesale, you know, trying to get the distributors and things like that. It's hard to sell to a store and still. you know, have enough profit to go around to everyone. But, you know, again, it's, again, the retro isn't exactly, you know, where the money is. We do it because we love it. It's part of our identity, but obviously the PC titles without releasing, you know, releasing and distributing hard copies is, uh, is where you're going to make most of your money. Yeah. I'm surprised to hear you talk about, you know, wholesale. Um, like what, what businesses are there that would buy, uh, you know, wholesale lots of, uh, of new day, you know, modern day NES creations. That doesn't seem

to be something you'd walk into GameStop and see. Not GameStop, no. It's mostly the retro stores that are around. Small mom and pop game shops really more than anything else. Other businesses and places

that are part of this retro community, you know, that still enjoy and purvey these older games. Yeah, so. even though you're creating your own boards basically from scratch, you're still working with existing mapper technology, like MMC3 and that sort of thing? Yeah, MMC3 is actually the one we use.

Okay. So you basically have a template for designer, you know, manufacturing that, and you just work to those specifications? Correct. So what is it about MMC3 that makes, you know, makes it so accessible, that's so, I guess, so easy to work with or such a smart choice to work with. MMC3 is great because it's powerful

as far as what it offers in terms of memory and graphics and when it can do. There are boards that offer a little bit more, like the MMC5, but the MMC3 works in a lot of the aftermarket NES consoles, like the Retron's, like Retron 3 will run MMC3 at Retron 1 will. A lot of the Retrons will not run the MMFC5. so it seems to be the best all-around choice.

Yeah, I don't think even the NES Mini that Nintendo made has emulation for the MMC-5. Right. If I'm not mistaken, you can hack pretty much any game into it except, you know, like Castlevania 3 or... Right. There's a couple, there's like five MMC-5 games that were ever made. There's not very many. So, yeah, that's interesting that it's like kind of out of spec even for Nintendo. exactly yeah

yeah I think if I'm thinking back like MNSC3 was pretty much the most common mapper used once it came out like basically after 1989 or so it was like pretty much every game so I guess that gives you kind of like a really easy baseline to work against like you can pretty much

duplicate any game out there right yeah like I said it offers us a lot in terms of you know creativity and graphics and memory so we can do some pretty cool things are you able to work with larger cartridge sizes you know memory sizes than was available to people making games back then or is there a hard limit on what the MMC3 can recognize there is a hard limit um we haven't tried any of the uh the funkier things like soldering chips

together as far as like memory and stuff like that but so when it comes to uh you know moving over to Sega Genesis or even the the super nests the game that you're working on like what kind of limitations do you have to work with on those? I mean, those were much more powerful systems, but they still did have their restrictions. Definitely. That's what it always comes down to is things like color and palette

and sprite limits and things like that. You know, jumping from the NES to the Sega, you are opened up a lot as in terms of like sprites on screen and colors and things like that, but it's not as much as as PC, for example, obviously. So we can get kind of crazy

and sometimes we do because we feel so liberated, you know, moving from the NES to the Sega, but then we run out of things like, oh, we can't do this because of X, Y, and Z. So at first it's frustrating, but once you learn to work within the limitations, it actually makes you more creative and sort of like a better designer, because now you're thinking of, okay, you know, here's the entirety of what this cartridge can hold, and now you're planning everything around that, and you're thinking, like, well, how can I do

this differently to making you more efficient, or how can I do this and make it interesting still so that it fits? getting back to Nintendo with Little Medusa, we knew that we weren't going to have a lot of enemy types and save most of the on-screen space for different puzzle elements. So we actually have, on like a per-page basis, like in Banks of Memory, we have more tiles reserved for background space

because that's where the puzzle elements are rather than Sprite space, which is kind of flip-flops. A lot of games most of the times, they'll focus the majority on sprites. You have more sprites on screen and doing things where Little Medusa just made more sense to do the other way around. So again, it comes down to recognizing the limits and then working within them

and using them to your advantage to be more creative and build a better game. And what about Super Enes? I mean, that was a, you know, in some ways, a more powerful system than anything else on the market at the time, but also it definitely had some restrictions and some funkiness to work around. So what are you targeting? Like, what's, I don't know, can you talk about the Super 8S game you're working on? so we have a handful in development right now

they're all too early that I would really want to say anything about them but you're right as far as the superintendent with the different modes and everything it's a whole new ballpark for us that we're just kind of getting our feet wet and exploring it it's kind of ironic since I guess the Super Nintendo as far in terms of you know the passion projects and the retro community is I guess a little bit more popular than Genesis don't tell anyone else that pretty big Genesis fans around here you know the Sega does what Nintendo don't thing still lives on. The console wars from 30 years ago, still rage here. But yeah, the

Super Nintendo's, it's a new beast, a strange beast to us, but we're certainly getting to master it slowly but surely. Yeah, I'll be curious to see what exactly you come up with. There aren't a lot of sort of latter-day Super NES creations that I can think of. Mostly the games that I see published for Super NES these days are like games that are dredged up. from, you know, unreleased games or games that ever made it to the US or, you know, games that were on Satellaview in Japan and no one has ever heard of, but they're, you know, they are existing software. So building one from the ground up in 2018 is definitely, yeah, that's interesting to me. It's something, like I said, I don't see a lot of. I think the most recent, um, at least the

most recent new Super Nintendo game I'm aware of was called Unholy Night. And the, um, it's a It was a fighting game. So, yeah, you're right. There's not a whole lot of new, you know, this millennia, Super Nintendo games. So there's definitely a lot of stuff that can be done with that system. I know there wasn't a lot of Mode 7 games released. I think that's something that wants more experienced,

you know, something that we can explore. But, yeah, I'm interested. I'm interested to see what we can do, too, once we start to learn the ropes a little bit better. What kind of projects do you guys have slated beyond Super. and yes, Genesis, the stuff you're working on for 2018. Are you going to keep working in the retro mode? Are you going to explore new platforms? Or is this just kind of like a fun side thing? And you've kind of exhausted the possibilities? I don't think the possibilities will ever be

exhausted. We're definitely going to focus more on our PC titles. And like I said, our first big one logjammers is coming out in March. We'll have a Kickstarter this month. But definitely some of other PC titles that have been kind of like on the rack for a little bit and we're going to push those out this year and definitely more 16-bit games, but beyond that I think it just goes to it's going to be

as the population ages, I think more modern systems quote-unquote will become the new nostalgia, we've become the new thing that's retro, so we're definitely not opposed to doing a new N64 game or PlayStation 1 game. It's just a matter of learning that

and getting finding the ways to you know, physically manufacture those as well. Yeah, well, also those games require a lot more resources, you know, in terms of assets and just, you know, the scope of the games. An NES game is a much simpler and easier thing for a small studio to put together

than a PlayStation game. Definitely. Do you guys show up at like classic gaming conventions or are you pretty much a behind-the-scenes company that is happy to like let other companies, you know, vendors, present your stuff for you? No, we're definitely, we definitely hit all the

conventions we can. We'd like to be part of, you know, the conversations in the retro community and get out there and support it as well. You know, we go to the big ones, we were just the MagFest. We were at Pac-South, but we do a lot of local ones. We do, you know, any little retro game thing we can get, within driving distance, that's within reason. You know, we always try to do

a couple conventions a month, so we're definitely out there in the trenches, as it were. Okay. Well, I think that's all I have for you. It's a pretty unique take on NES games that I've seen so far. Right. So thanks for your time. Yeah, do you want to let our listeners know where they could find you and your work online, websites, Twitter, Facebook, that sort of thing?

Definitely. Megacatstudios.com is the website. You know, there's an email on there if you'd like to get in touch. My name is Zach Manco. You can reach me at Zach.m. At megacad Studios, if anyone wants to reach out and I'm happy to talk to anyone. And your next release, you said, is Little Medusa, and you guys have a Kickstarter coming up? Our next NES release is Little Medusa. It'll be coming out this month. It's nearly finished.

Our first big PC title is Logjammers, and we'll have a Kickstarter for that very shortly. Okay. Well, Zach, thank you for your time, and I will look forward to seeing more of your ventures, especially for more advanced systems. Thanks for having me on the show, Jeremy. As always, this has been Retronauts, and I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find Retronauts at Retronauts.com on iTunes, on other podcatchers on the podcast one network, and on the podcast one app. We are, of course, supported through Patreon, patreon.com slash Retronauts. For $3 a month, you can get advanced episodes and a higher bitrate quality without ads.

That's a pretty rad deal. So, yeah, thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with another episode with better audio quality. So look forward to that. The Muller Report. I'm Edonohue, with the Moller Report. I'm Edonohue with an AP. News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of

President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican Senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do.

The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.